Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

internetworkers - Re: [internetworkers] Apple goes for market share

internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Sil Greene <quack AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Apple goes for market share
  • Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 13:48:16 -0500 (EST)



from Scott:
On Jan 11, 2005, at 7:28 PM, Sil Greene wrote:

1.4GHz G4 processor
80gig HD
256MB of PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SRAM, supports up to 1GB
ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of DDR SDRAM with AGP 4X support
Slot-loading Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
One FireWire 400 port; two USB 2.0 ports; DVI output
Built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem


Base price: $599

Add:
+ 75 RAM upgrade to 512
+ 100 SuperDrive
+ 79 Airport Express card
+ 58 wired keybd/mouse
+ 149 AppleCare "Enrollment Kit" (?)
------
$1060

Bah. 256 is plenty for doing web / mail / and chat along with typical house hold stuff like Quicken and Word. I can see the need for a SuperDrive, though I have to say, we've had one in this house for the last 3 years and I can recall only burning one DVD with it.

If you're going to do anything with that SuperDrive other than copying a DVD, ie, any video/audio processing whatsoever, 256 ain't enough. I agree, for what you've listed, it's plenty.


I suppose a keyboard and mouse are needed if you don't have some laying around already.


I have plenty, but my keyboards are PS/2-style only. Though I could probably get them cheaper from someone other than Apple, so nix that. Still over a grand: $1002.

Do you get the extended warranty at Best Buy too? ;)


Umm, yes, when I bought my POS (that's not Point-Of-Sale) eMachines laptop. I've already used it to replace the original hard drive. I expect to get a new laptop through it one of these days. Of course, that was my first (and last) major purchase from BestBuy.


I'm thinking of getting one to run as a headless server. (Access would be by vnc and ssh.) I think the base CPU and RAM would be more than enough to handle web and file serving in the house along with odd ball tasks like DNS. For storage I can take my existing IDE drives and put them into a external USB/Firewire enclosure. My only question is will it boot without a keyboard, mouse and display attached and if not what do I need to do to it to fool it into booting. :)

I'm on a few DVR/PVR lists as well and see lots of excitement as people trying to figure out the best way to turn this cheap box into full fledge media center. I think in the next 6 months we'll see a lot of development work put in towards this goal, both in Open Source and 3rd party vendors.


I don't know why you'd get one of these just to play web-and-dns server. There's a 486 in my closet I'll let you have for $25 that can do just as good a job.

Sure, this little Mac would probably be a great media center box, but again if it's doing any *processing* of that media (not simply capture-and-playback -- think transcoding, editing, or streaming to [multiple] other devices) then you definitely want more RAM.




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page